Leave your pawprints!

Sunday 21 September 2008

Where we walk

Most of the pictures on these pages were taken while we're out walking at our favourite place, Roseisle Forest. We've made some great friends there, in the forest and on the beach. When we're not away at a show we walk there every single day, rain or shine, wind or snow as you'll see from some of the photos! There are so many lovely walks there, some are waymarked but once you get to know the place you'll find many more off the beaten track..............and if you're up for a bit of a challenge you can do the Moray Coast Trail!

We see plenty of interesting things at the beach........lots of big cruise ships pass by on their way to Norway and other far away places, oil rigs being tugged to or from Invergordon......we're more interested in the Seals though.......but Findhorn is better for Seal-watching and if you're lucky you might see the Osprey fishing in the bay. With Roseisle being sandwiched between two RAF bases as you can imagine, the skies are pretty busy too! It's Nimrods usually but sometimes the jets from Lossie fly over.....they're SO LOUD! Occasionally we see the Sea King helicopter which is very impressive, if it's flying low we give them a wave and they wave back, Snoop still really believes that he'll catch it one day :0)

As is the case along many other parts of the Scottish coast some remnants from WW2 still remain. The coastline from Findhorn to Burghead is a wide bay of beautiful white sand (with occasional pebbly patches depending on how rough the sea is!) and all along the beach there are pillboxes and tank blocks. You can read more about these here.
Another historical WW2 fact is that one of the Valentine Tanks used in rehearsals for the D-Day landings lies below the waters of Burghead Bay, another just off Findhorn Pier, click here to read an article about them.

Today Liam and I walked the dogs and thought we'd try and get a photo of them peeking out from inside one of the pillboxes, we think they've turned out really well, though it did take quite alot of encouragement.......and we had a bit of an audience who thought it was all very amusing!


One day while Craig and I were walking the Hounds Craig noticed something had been scratched into one of the tank blocks.............when we looked closer it said DOWN WITH HITLER.....the block next to it has someone's name. We were so impressed with our find that we took pictures. The Hitler one is quite sunken and sometimes you won't see it as it gets buried but the one with the name is taller.


Other nice walks in the area include the vast Culbin Forest which has a new viewpoint, lots of beautiful way-marked ways and is teeming with wildlife and packed with info......and Newtyle Forest by Rafford, it's part of the Dava Way. We haven't been there for a long time as last time we were there Alfie almost got himself shot by the farmer..........but that's another story!

2 sniffy tailwags:

karensbrae said...

Got here at last!!
Good blog.

Karen
xx

Anonymous said...

Yep, i see it...is that the new beagle kennel....